Fokie Cnossen - Learning to perform complex medical skills – can cognitive modeling help?

Humans are capable of amazing things, and one of the biggest achievements of humans must surely be that they can perform extremely complex medical procedures such as heart-lung transplantations. How do people learn to perform such skills to such high standards? And could we improve their education to enhance learning?
In this colloquium I want to discuss what we know about complex skill acquisition and present the results of a simulator experiment we performed on teaching a relative simple medical procedure.
In the simulator experiment, we showed 3rd-year medical students how to perform a transthoracic echocardiogram and used video lessons to teach the students the facts of the procedure, including heart anatomy. Students were then trained in performing the procedure themselves. After 3 and/or 8 weeks, we re-assessed their knowledge and skills.
I will discuss the results of this experiment and finish with showing the potential role that cognitive modeling can play in informing medical skill instruction to create strong and adaptive skills.